Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

For shame, NPR, for falling for false “balance” about vaccines!

This is going to be uncharacteristically short, for me that is. I sometimes listen to NPR as I drive home from work, and I happened to be doing just that yesterday evening when I heard a story about the new Institute of Medicine report on vaccines and the vaccine schedule. (Stay tuned for my post […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby’s back, and this time his anti-vaccine fear mongering induces…ennui

I sense a disturbance in the antivaccine Force, which is, of course, by definition the Dark Side. Whenever I sense such a disturbance, there are a number of possible reactions that it provokes in me. One such reaction is alarm, as when antivaccine activists say something that is just clever enough to sound plausible enough […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Andrew Wakefield wins an award just as he jumps on the anti-psychiatry bandwagon

I certainly don’t even try to keep secret my opinion of Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist who is almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the measles back to the UK, thanks to his bad science, for which he was well-paid by trial lawyers and his falsification of data and scientific fraud. Since 1998, when Wakefield first […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

Cry the antivaxers and quacks: ‘Twas big pharma that led Adam Lanza to kill

Quacks despise science-based medicine in general, but there are certain specialties that they detest more than others. Arguably, the specialty most attacked by quacks is psychiatry. Many are the reasons, some legitimate, many not. In particular, Scientologists despise psychiatry, even going so far as to maintain a “museum” dedicated to psychiatry that they charmingly call […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Antivaccine quackery: You be Orac today!

Some antivaccine (and quack, but I repeat myself) tropes come up time and time again, and I’ve blogged about them time and time again. Obviously, at times this can get a bit repetitive, particularly when I’ve been blogging nearly every day for eight years. On the other hand, even after eight years, I still regularly […]